The World Is Burning
by Aaron Decart
Summary: Picks up where the finale stops...at the trail of blood that Sylar left during his escape. In the sewers he must face his own mortality, identity, and a sister he never knew.


I do not own Heroes in any way, shape, or form.

Gabriel Gray. _He had to keep repeating the name in his mind to remember it. Ever since he'd started his quest for ultimacy that name had grown to mean less and less. Now he had to keep it in the forefront of his thoughts just to remember who he was. _ Gabriel Gray. That was who he was. Was he still that? Was he still Gabriel? He shared little or no resemblance to that shadow of a man that he had once been. Because he had changed had he truly ceased being Gabriel Gray? Had that man died?

He lay in the dank, dark tunnels of the sewers. He'd lost his way a long time ago. It really didn't matter. As he lay, bleeding out the last of Gabriel Gray. Why did that name have so much meaning? Grace… He thought. It was a muddled, almost incomprehensible thought. The image of a sister. A sister he had never known. A sister who had died at birth. His twin. His soul mate. He wondered if Gabriel would have festered and decayed inside of Sylar if Grace had been there to hold him. His blood. His spirit. A part of him had died when she'd been born dead, he knew that. It was why he was so void, so nothing. It was why Gabriel was destroyed so absolutely to make way for the new megalomaniacal Sylar. The Charmer. The Destroyer. The Murderer. The Emptiness.

Gabriel Gray. The name almost meant nothing now. He was Sylar. The pathetic watchmaker who couldn't talk to a woman let alone sleep with one in nearly his whole life, the little boy who would sit in the back of the cafeteria and stare at the other children until one complained to the teacher. The loser. He was dying. But would Sylar die with him? Could Sylar exist without Gabriel?

Her scent filled his nose. It was a scent that he'd smelled so many times before--when she came to him. Grace… Her face was always blurry, he could never make her out. His twin. His soul. She was on her knees beside him, pulling his dying body into her lap, stroking his hair, kissing his forehead, telling him that it would be alright. "Am I going to die?" Gabriel asked. Gabriel, not Sylar.

"Not today, sweetheart." she murmured, her lips close to his ear, her hand holding his tightly. "Not yet."

"I'm sorry." he rasped, his vision going red. Tears stinging his eyes. Gabriel was crying. Sylar was quiet. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be." She replied, her warm moved across his chest, covering his wound. "Never be sorry for who you are." she moved her lips right next to his ear. "Sylar doesn't own you."

"Yes he does…" Gabriel whispered, the red turning to black. The warm sensation flooded his senses. He'd felt it twice before, once when he'd been pushed off of the High School by the Exploding Man and the second time when the man in the Horned Rimmed Glasses shot him. The warm sensation of his other half's touch. The pain slowly evaporated. The other two times it'd been simply a feeling of wholeness, this time it was different. It burnt. He ground his teeth together, squeezing his eyes shut, making the sound of a wounded animal. "Stop!" he yelled. "Stop! Please! Oh God, stop!"

"God is dead." her sweet voice whispered, and then she was gone.

Gabriel lay on the cold concrete, sucking in lungfulls of air, his whole body felt like it was on fire. Even his legs. He realized he'd had no feeling in them, it was slowly returning, it felt like someone had shoved pins into them. He yelled again, curling up in a fetal position and whimpering like a beaten dog.

His blood had stopped flowing. He lay in a pool of pink-stained, rancid water, holding himself. His breath was shaky. His whole body was sticky. He didn't know how long he lay there, his mind blank, his body reeling. He wasn't even sure what had happened. Was he dead?

No. He realized. If he had died he would've seen Grace's face. No, he was alive--Grace had saved him.

Why had he gone to Kirby Plaza? He'd seen his death before he'd gone. He knew with the same grim determination that he would die as the painter had known. What had been his name? He couldn't remember. What was his name? Sylar. He thought. Why had he gone? He had to. He was impelled to go. It hadn't been a question. No, it wasn't fate. Man made his own fate, and Gods made the rest. He was a God. He was God. A God surrounded by insects. Like a child with a magnifying glass, he bore no more responsibility to those deaths then a tiger who slew a gazelle. It was sustenance. It was meaning. His character defined him, made him who he was, gave him the capability to do what he did. He had gone to the Kirby Plaza not for the possibility that he may indeed succeed in obtaining the Exploding Man's power, no, he had time for that, it was simply the path that he had to walk. The way he had to go in order to progress. There simply was no other alternative. It wasn't fate. A God did not adhere to fate, no, but it was necessary.

And the little Asian man, no, he wasn't a man, he was a boy, the boy who had thought to slay the dragon. He had no more right to kill his God, no more power to overthrow him, then did an ant to topple a kingdom. The Kingdom. His Kingdom. This world would be his. Not to rule, no, he had no interest in that, but he would control it by simply denying everyone else. Everything else. No moral code existed except his own, and in that way he would reject the world and thereby conquer it.

He rose slowly, his head spinning, his hand moving to where the boy's sword had skewered him, but the wound was gone. Grace had healed him. Grace had made him whole. She had given him another chance. Another shot. Another bite. He wouldn't waste it. In this he knew that there was no chance that he would lose, no, with Grace he would take the world by force--and burn anyone who got in his way.  
Sylar grinned, his hands glowing with poisonous fire. The world would burn. Oh--they would burn. 


End file.
